Spending cuts: 'Westminster doesn't understand how people will suffer'

Consett weathered a painful period of mass unemployment after its steel industry closed. Now, it faces going through it all again

Durham county councillors watch the announcement of the comprehensive spending review, which will herald widespread cuts in the public sector. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian
Martin Argles/Guardian

Simon Henig, Labour leader of Durham county council, listens to the chancellor's speech, pursing his lips, muttering and tapping at a calculator.

Turning to his colleagues, who are huddled with him in his office, straining their necks to watch a television balanced on top of a cupboard, he offers a quick interpretation of what the announcements will mean for towns and villages across his area.

"It's in the ballpark of our worst case scenario," he says, looking at his scribbled calculations. Somehow over the next four years, he estimates that around £100m may have to be cut from the council's annual budget of £500m. "We're going to have to make some appallingly difficult decisions."

For places like the former steel town of Consett, which have endured and scraped through previous periods of austerity, there will, he says, be considerable new pain.

Two blows will be dealt simultaneously: 46% of the council's budget is spent on salaries, so job losses are inevitable; at the same time, Henig says, every area – from libraries to leisure centres, from rubbish collection and bus routes to care provision – is likely to shrink. Since care for elderly and disabled people is the most expensive part of the budget, these services are likely to take a particularly severe cut.

"Ideally we wouldn't touch that, but I honestly don't think that we will have a choice," he says. Those who are already vulnerable will be harder hit, he predicts. "The rich don't use libraries or public transport. The poorer sections of society rely on these services much more than the affluent. I think in Westminster they haven't understood how people will suffer on the ground."

If the iconic image of the last crisis to hit this area was of unemployed (male) miners and steelworkers, the modern equivalent will be that of public sector employees, most of them women. In Consett, it is the children and grandchildren of former steelworkers – who found work in the public sector when the steelworks closed – who are now in the line of fire: librarians, care workers, jobcentre workers, administrative staff in the nearby HMRC and Child Benefit Office headquarters.

Around 40% of Consett's workers are employed in the public sector, and almost everyone here knows someone who is worried about their job. With around 500,000 public sector jobs at risk nationwide, places such as Consett with a high concentration of public sector workers are particularly vulnerable.

"We are eating, sleeping and breathing it. It's the uncertainty. Morale is really low," says Anne Taylor, 53, a care worker in an old people's home, who has received formal notification from the county council that her job is under review. (Like many of the public sector workers interviewed in Consett, she gave a pseudonym and did not want her real name to be printed, at pains to avoid doing anything that could further worsen her job prospects.)

"Realistically I am probably going to lose my job," she says. "The home will go to the private sector where staff will be paid the minimum wage."

The precise details of the council's funding settlement may not be clear for several weeks, and it will be some months before the full fallout from today's announcement becomes clear, but the prospect of new job losses hangs heavy on people's minds. The feeling of widespread anxiety is reminiscent, Taylor says, of the months before the steelworks here closed in September 1980, cutting 3,600 jobs instantly and pushing male unemployment in the town to somewhere near 100%. "Most of us have been here before and we came through, but it is going to be a hard slog," she says. "We have to be resilient, keep our chins up, like we did before."

Clearly the impact of the announcements will not have the same instantly catastrophic effect as the steelworks closures, but residents who once worked there and subsequently retrained to take public sector jobs sense a bleak familiarity in the unfolding process.

A 53-year-old local librarian, Margaret Anderson (also not her real name), spent Monday night at a public meeting listening to officials trying to reassure her that her job would be safe, amid rumours that the council has already begun to assess which of the region's 39 libraries it can afford to keep open. A former steelworks employee, she feels she has heard this all before.

"What upsets me the most is that I went through this at the beginning of my career. We never thought the company would close down: the decision was political. It wasn't our fault," she says. "Again now, it's political – it's not our fault the banks got in a mess. At the end of my career, all the uncertainty is back again." She remembers that it was the older employees who found it hardest to get new work, and wonders if she is now in their position. "Will anyone want to employ me at my age?"

Women in lower-paid jobs will find themselves particularly at risk of losing their jobs, charities warn. According to the TUC, 47% of women in this area work in the public sector, outnumbering men three to one. But the anxiety in Consett affects both sexes and stretches through the generations.

At a lunchtime tea dance session in Consett, Isabel Beadle, 86, is one of the elderly people likely to be hit by cuts if the subsidised bus service that brings her from her a village half a mile away to the shops and her friends in the town is cut back or discontinued.

"I don't drive and I couldn't walk it. The bus makes an awful lot of difference to my life," she says. "There's nothing in my village except a shop selling pet food, which isn't much good to me."

Infirm and elderly people in Consett may also be hit disproportionately by changes to disability allowances, because of the legacy of the steel industry. Before the works closed, fresh snow would be turned dusty pink by industrial smog, and many former steelworkers suffer from respiratory problems.

Phil Burke, a support worker for adults with disabilities, is sitting with two of the people he is employed to look after during the week, watching around 70 retired residents foxtrot around the room. The dancers are wearing muted dresses and beige cardigans, but the women have gold and silver sparkling shoes that make a scratchy, sandy noise on the dusty floor as they shuffle around.

Both his job, and the daily outings he organises for the residents of a care home for the disabled, are threatened by today's announcement, although it was not immediately clear whether the extra £2bn annouced for social care would mitigate the pressure on councils to make cuts to this area. "It's a quality of life issue for them, something to occupy their minds. It makes their life richer," he says. "It would be a pity if I did lose my job."

This unease is evident throughout the town. At Consett county court, staff are waiting to hear whether this is one of the local courts that will close as a result of a government review announced in June. At the Connexions careers advice centre, next door to the Job Centre Plus offices, staff think they will know by December whether their jobs will be safe, after months of speculation over possible reductions to the service.

"There are a lot people in a similar situation," an employee says. Many of her friends in the town feel equally vulnerable because they, too, work for the public sector. "There's nothing else. They took our industry away. It's a worrying time."

At the police station, Inspector Dave Turner expects to lose some of his support staff, which will force the station to reduce the number of hours it is open to the public, cutting weekend and evening opening times.

"What you have to do as a force is to deliver the same quality of service with some restriction on finances," he says, with determined optimism. He worries more about the consequences for the town of parallel funding cuts to the youth clubs, which he believes have helped reduce antisocial behaviour in the area.

"I don't think that Consett has ever got over the closure of the steelworks. When you look at the opportunities for young people these days, they are very, very few," he says. "Most of the people we come into contact with are unemployed. There has got to be something for young people to do."

Across the road, at the YMCA, the organisation's chief executive, Billy Robson, is concerned about dwindling funding for the programmes he runs to help teenagers without qualifications get work. "I'd hate to be in their position now, looking for work," he says. The cancellation of the Future Jobs Fund programme (which supported job creation for disadvantaged young people) earlier this year has already limited the number of young people the YMCA can help.

Staff at the Citizens Advice Bureau are also grappling with looming funding uncertainties that they fear will impact on their ability to advise local residents with debt problems. The government funding for two debt advisers comes to an end next March, and no one knows whether these jobs will be lost or if they can be saved somehow.

"They may or may not lose their jobs, but worse than that we will not be able to advise people on their debt problems," Cliff Laws, who runs the office, says. "There's a massive amount of debt in the area. If more people are losing their jobs, then debt problems will rise. Our inquiries regarding debt have gone up by 50% in the past year." He is also struggling to understand the government's arguments about the role of the "big society". The idea that the voluntary sector can step in when the state is rolled back will not work, he argues, if funding for the voluntary sector is being rolled back too.

The Labour MP Pat Glass, whose North-West Durham constituency embraces Consett and its population of 32,000, remembers that many predicted the town would be wiped out by the steel closure. Instead the area recovered unexpectedly well, largely because of government support. There may be a new influx of government money into the town if a planned academy school goes ahead, but the potentially positive impact of this could be undermined by the parallel process of cuts, she warns.

"The real worry is that it will create another generation of worklessness," she says.

"We are no longer reliant on a single employer like the steel industry, but we are reliant on the public sector. If that is cut in the way we expect, we will see huge unemployment in the Consett area again. We are bracing ourselves.

"I am really worried about jobs in the constituency, because we have been there before and we know the impact it will have."

At County Hall, Simon Henig has some uncomfortable wrestling with the budget ahead of him. He believes that the government has deliberately tried to suggest that councils have high levels of bureaucratic and administrative waste that can painlessly be cut away. "They have promoted the idea that we can save it all on administration, bureaucracy. It's not true. It must impact on frontline services," he says. Administrative costs account for just 5% of his budget. "There are only so many efficiency savings we can make."